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A 21st-Century Public Health Approach to Abortion

A 21st-Century Public Health Approach to Abortion. ANSIRH’s Sarah Roberts and Nancy Berglas, along with Liza Fuentes of the Guttmacher Institute and Amanda Dennis of the Society of Family Planning, published a commentary in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH). They applied an accepted public health framework, the CDC’s 10 Essential Public Health Services, to describe how health departments should engage with abortion.

Using this framework as a guide, they argue that health departments should: facilitate women’s ability to obtain an abortion and promote the use of a scientific evidence base in abortion-related laws, policies, regulations, and implementation of essential public health services.

They also point out the importance of involving public health professionals in decisions about how health departments should engage with abortion. They state that public health professionals – and not legislators – should define the abortion-related public health services in which health departments should engage. They invite other public health professionals to join this crucial conversation about how health departments should engage with abortion in the 21st-Century and use this commentary as a starting point.

Receiving an abortion enables women to take care of their existing children. Being able to delay having a child results in closer relationships between the mother and child and greater economic security